


Love Is a Long Long Road -- Ending One

by padawanhilary, Telesilla



Series: Long Long Road [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Biting, Dom/sub, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-05
Updated: 2010-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:13:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padawanhilary/pseuds/padawanhilary, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telesilla/pseuds/Telesilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Rodney meet up and then meet up again, but the years haven't been that easy on them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Is a Long Long Road -- Ending One

_Washington, DC, October 2002_

By the time his Pentagon debriefing was over, John just wanted to go home and crash. He'd managed to get a few hours of sleep the night before, but still, less than thirty-six hours ago he'd been in the no fly zone over North Korea, and he was pretty fucking tired.

_And wired,_ he thought, as he made for the street, hoping to hail a cab. He knew this feeling, and knew that with Nancy off visiting her parents, he had two options--go home and drink enough scotch to knock him out, or hit one of the bars and find some guy to fuck him hard.

Normally, he'd go for the scotch, but right now, door number two sounded way too inviting. He had civilian clothes and supplies in his overnight bag and that would save the trip to Arlington and back. All he needed to do was get a hotel room and shower and change.

His mind on the plan, he wasn't looking where he was going and so he shouldn't have been too surprised when he plowed into the guy in the expensive suit. "Oh fuck," he said, glad he hadn't pushed the guy into the street. "I'm so sorry...."

"Oh for--" Rodney got out in that nanosecond before the voice registered and his stomach went hot and queasy. "John?" he breathed, his convenience-store sack of half-gone Chee-tos and its corresponding empty bottle of Pepsi dangling forgotten at his side.

"Sorry, do I know...." John stared at the guy, taking in the broad shoulders, slightly wavy brown hair, bright blue eyes, annoyed expression.... "Holy fuck! Rodney?"

"Yeah." Rodney swallowed hard. "Wow." His mouth twisted into something that tried to be a smile, but he was too stunned to pull it off, and he couldn't read whether John was as turned around as he was. "It's been a long time. Uh." _Social niceties. Come up with something polite and friendly, but not overtly friendly, but not too distant, either. Balance._ He gaped stupidly, the words just drying up, and then looked down at his Chee-tos.

"Yeah," John said. "A long time. Jesus, seems like forever." The whole thing was strange, and he tried to concentrate on the absurdity instead of the way hearing Rodney's voice was making his stomach do flip flops. "Hey, do you still like a good steak?"

"Oh. Yeah," Rodney nodded, laughing a little himself; it seemed crazy and yet exactly like John that they had gone from plowing into each other--again--to dinner. Again. He looked at John and pulled in a breath. "I can--you know, actually buy this time."

He felt the longing as keenly as it had been the day he'd boarded the plane. It was sharp and hungry and unpleasant, especially when he had to wonder if this was an old-friends kind of steak dinner or an old-lovers kind of steak dinner, and then he got a little pissed off at himself because it didn't matter. He was leaving in a couple of days. Again.

"Looks like," John said, stepping back and looking at Rodney. "Nice suit." It was weird how this conversation was as stilted and strange as their first one. That John remembered their first conversation so well was something he didn't like to think about. "Hey, why don't we share a cab? I know this place where we can get dinner and...you know, catch up."

_Catch up...._ John hoped they could do more than that and with that thought in mind, he quickly checked out Rodney's left hand. _No ring, but that may not mean anything; I'm not wearing mine._

"Sure, yeah," Rodney said briskly, nodding for good measure. "Umm." He swallowed again, hating the way his generally acerbic and smart wit had just deserted him. "Catching up sounds great." _And you sound like an idiot. Damn._

John waved at a passing taxi and was surprised when the guy actually stopped. As he and Rodney climbed into the cab and he gave the name of the restaurant and its address, he wondered if he was making a mistake. What did they have to say to each other? _I've never found anyone who makes me feel the way you did and, trust me, I've spent all too many nights in gay bars looking?_

"So," he said. "Are you working here in DC these days?" _Lame, Sheppard. Really lame._

"No," Rodney hedged slowly, "I'm kind of...you know, all over the place. I'm one of those guys Canada just sends everywhere." And yeah, it was an equally lame response, but how did you just bump into someone at the Pentagon and then explain that your work just might be too high clearance to talk about? Rodney wasn't even _from_ here for God's sake.

"Whatever it is, it's probably just as classified as what I'm doing." John thought about it for a moment, remembering just how smart Rodney really was. "Even more so, I'm guessing."

"Yeah." Rodney looked out the window, at the back of the cabby's head, at the street in front of them. Finally he managed to look at John again, and _damn_, John looked good. "So. You've been doing okay?"

_Not really; I've pretty much stopped talking to Dad and Dave except at holidays, and my marriage may last another six months if I'm lucky, and I really hate being in the closet. Oh, and I've kinda forgotten most of the complex math I used to love. How are you?_

"Not bad," John said. "They let me fly the cool planes." And really, that was the pure unvarnished truth, the thing that made everything else tolerable. He glanced at his shoulder. "Just made Major last month."

"Oh, well--wow, yeah. Congratulations. And the cool planes, right, that was what you wanted. That's pretty great." God, Rodney sounded so stupid, and all he wanted to do was grab John and find out if he still kissed the same.

_Oh God, this is awful._ John looked out the window for a moment and then took a deep breath and turned back to Rodney.

"Look," he said quietly. "This is...it's stupid and it's not right. It's not us. I was gonna get a room tonight. Do you want...." He took another deep breath. "Come spend the night with me. Please?"

"Yes," Rodney said immediately, nodding. "Yes, absolutely." And this was a switch, after all those nights when John begged and Rodney teased, now it almost felt as though if Rodney held himself back, didn't immediately go for this, then John would just disappear again. It was going to happen anyway, but it didn't have to happen _now._

"Oh, thank God," John said, not caring how relieved he sounded. Tapping on the glass, he gave the cabbie the new destination. "I...God, Rodney. What're the odds?"

"I don't--well, I could guess." Rodney could actually get pretty close, and once upon a time, John could have pegged it dead-on. There weren't that many high-clearance people working with the U.S. Armed Forces, and even if there had been, there was only one Pentagon. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. We're here."

How he made it up to the room without shoving Rodney up against a wall, John wasn't sure. Well no, he was sure, because as he stared at Rodney, he was remembering the dynamic and how it wasn't on him to do the shoving. Once the door closed behind them, he took a deep breath and went still, hoping that Rodney could still read him as well as he had back then.

Rodney stared a moment, trying to figure out how he should feel. The letters and calls had dwindled--hell, Rodney's calls had been nearly nonexistent, as broke as he was back then--after they'd realized that answering machines were no way to keep in contact and both of them sucked at letters. The problem with the letters had been, for them, the lack of sex. The lack of scenes, more correctly, of beatings, fucking, John getting cuffed down, Rodney smacking him across the face. You couldn't do any of that in a letter--well, Rodney couldn't, though somewhere in the world was some amazing writer and lover who could express himself in a way that was meant to be more than two lines of implied jacking-off and a lot of awkward chemistry talk.

And that, of course, had made Rodney wonder what they'd had between them, exactly. The further he'd come from it, the harder it had been to think of it as a real relationship. Did he love John? Did John love him? Did they just need a partner for their own respective power exchanges?

Rodney was no closer to the answer now than he had been when he'd realized the letters weren't coming anymore, and he really didn't have anything else to say. Still, that didn't change the fact that he was standing here, staring at John and _aching,_ knowing John would drop like a rock, and for a few more seconds he wanted to put it off, because the sooner they started, the sooner it would be over, and Rodney couldn't stand to go back to awkward chemistry talk.

But then he had to move. He grabbed John by the arms and plowed him into the wall, mouth suddenly clamped to John's like it was all that was sustaining him. He grabbed at a handful of hair--_dammit, too short_\--and then just rested his palm across John's throat, just to go back there and have some of it back again.

John's fear, that he wouldn't be able to go down like he had before, suddenly seemed foolish. It didn't matter that he didn't actually sub when he hit the bars, that the one time he'd tried it with a woman had been a disaster. None of those people had been Rodney; he hadn't trusted them like he'd trusted Rodney. Like he still trusted Rodney.

Moaning, he leaned against the wall and just gave it up, handed it all to Rodney.

_Definitely no awkward chemistry now,_ Rodney thought a little disjointedly as he kissed and bit and sucked at John's mouth. It was as perfect as it had ever been, John pliant and hungry and Rodney just so ready to give him what they both needed. He shifted his grip down to John's wrists and raised them to pin them to the wall. "Missed this," he groaned against John's lips, shoving a thigh between John's legs.

"Me too," John said, and it didn't matter that he was admitting something, that he was talking about his feelings. What mattered was Rodney's strong grip on his wrists, Rodney's mouth mere centimeters from his and the almost-pain of Rodney's thigh against his dick.

"Please," he moaned. "Whatever you want...."

"Don't say that," Rodney got out. It wasn't true; he couldn't have whatever he wanted when that was John--when it was, more than anything else, to go _back._ He bit at John's mouth to shut him up and started yanking at clothes, uncaring that his fine suit was wrinkling and John was making soft pained noises every time Rodney's thigh shoved in a little too hard.

_But it's true,_ John thought, moaning into Rodney's mouth as Rodney wrestled him out of his uniform. But really, if he was being honest, it wasn't true. John would hardly walk away from his career for Rodney; he'd proved that before, when he'd let the letters get casual and impersonal, when he'd never said the one thing he'd wanted to say. He'd had a choice, Rodney or the Air Force, and he'd made it.

Rodney wasn't allowing himself think on those lines anymore. To be fair, he'd made his choice, too, and he had no idea if he actually regretted it, if he could have put off his career and still made it, if he could have stayed and found another way. And then there were his doubts--if he'd loved John that much, if John had loved him, if it would have been enough....

Fuck it all. They were here now. Rodney tilted his head and bit John's neck sharply, just to lay a little bit of claim after all this time, and then shoved off. "On the bed," he gritted out, "and I'm going to the bathroom. By the time I come out, you'd better be prepped or you're getting fucked dry." And he disappeared, figuring the best way to deal with this glut of emotion was ignore it as hard as he could.

All but tripping over his pants, John quickly finished getting the last of his clothes off--he refused to leave his socks on like this was some kind of porno--and then dug into his overnight bag to pulled out his shaving kit. He tossed a row of condoms onto the nightstand and then popped open the lube and slicked his fingers up. There was no graceful way of doing this, but he didn't care at all; he just flopped down on his back and shoved two fingers inside himself as hard and fast as he could.

Staring at himself in the mirror, Rodney wondered what he was playing at. Was he even in John's league anymore? Did John even think like that? Fuck, it was just one question after another, and he finally swallowed and splashed water over his face and finished stripping. He wanted this; John wanted this. That was enough for tonight.

John was still sprawled on the bed with his fingers up his ass when Rodney stepped out of the bathroom and he felt his face go hot. He'd forgotten what it felt like, that little rush of humiliation deep in the pit of his stomach. _God, I've missed that._

"How," he began and then had to clear his throat. "How do you want me?"

"On your back." Rodney thought, then added, "Grab the headboard; you're going to need the support."

Wishing that they had cuffs, John reached up and back and clung to the headboard. It was weird; after their first time, he'd never felt conscious about his body when he was with Rodney, but now, he was acutely aware of how pale he was and how he was even more hairy now than he had been at 19. _God, what if he doesn't like what he sees?_

Rodney didn't care about any of that, though. This was about John, and John right now was hot and needy and...just hot. Just like Rodney remembered. He leaned down to kiss John hard as he grabbed for the condoms.

Not caring that his hand was all sticky, John brought it up to the headboard with his other hand and kissed Rodney back as hard and as greedy as he could. He wanted this so much that it almost scared him; letting go was harder now then it had been back during that one incredible quarter. But somehow, he could still do it, could still reach that moment when he just went under and let Rodney take over.

Somehow, Rodney felt it. He slicked a condom onto himself and added lube to the outside, and then there was nothing left to do but shove in, his knees finding rough purchase in the bed as he started to thrust.

That first thrust in _hurt_, and John yelled out something wordless and shoved back up against Rodney as hard as he could, chasing down the pain and the burn. It shouldn't have felt all that different than getting fucked in a back room somewhere, but it did. It was Rodney fucking him, not some nameless guy, and that made all the difference in the world.

Grunting heavily, Rodney reached down to put a hand on John's chest, not really to hold him down but for the possessiveness of it. This was all going to be over soon, way too soon, and he wished he could find a way to make it last because beyond this was more of the same nothing he'd been feeling since he left Stanford. Right now, though...right now, he had John. That was enough for the moment. He stared down, panting, and for just an instant he thought he could convince himself they were in his crappy little apartment off-campus.

John was back there too, back in a time when he didn't have anything to worry about but getting his school work done so that he could be there when Rodney had time away from the accelerator. That wasn't really true though; he'd loved the work and loved the campus and loved the vast Pacific ocean with its tricky beautiful waves and he'd loved....

"Please," he gasped out. "Please, Rodney...please!"

Rodney reached down and grabbed John's cock, squeezing it brutally before he started to stroke. "Come," he ordered, wanting it to go just this way, John coming and then feeling the intensity of Rodney coming after him, those last thrusts.

That voice, that command...there was no way John could ignore it. Even though he didn't want to, wanted to drag this out longer, he took a deep, almost sobbing breath, and came hard, clinging to the headboard as he rode it out. "Fuck...oh God, Rodney," he moaned as Rodney fucked him right through the aftershocks.

"Mine," Rodney gritted out, but before he could wish he hadn't said it, he was coming. The orgasm made him cry out roughly as he shuddered through it, and then he was left shaking, breathing too hard, propped up on his hands. "Fuck," he sighed, shifting to one side and rubbing his eyes.

That "mine" hurt more than John would have expected, but he rolled with it and knew that nothing showed on his face. _I've gotten good at hiding things,_ he thought a little bitterly.

"We're not exactly teenagers any more," he said as Rodney dealt with the condom. "But...I dunno, if you want to stick around for a while...we could talk and see if...you know, we're able to go again."

Rodney swallowed hard. The worst thing about that suggestion was that he wanted to do it. He wished he could find a way to make that work, personally and between them, but he knew it was going to end in disappointment anyway.

"You know," he said quietly, sitting up and not looking at John, "I need to...you know. Early mornings and all that." It was the stupidest excuse ever, not to mention the most trite, but it was the best he could do when his stomach was queasy and his heart was sick.

"Fair enough," John said, and it was like the beginning of a crash; he could see it coming but it felt like there was nothing he could do to stop it. "I should probably head on home. Nancy's supposed to be gone until tomorrow night, but you know how it is. She might be back earlier."

It felt abruptly as though John had kicked Rodney in the stomach. Rodney swallowed down a lump and nodded tightly, getting up to jerk his clothes to rights. This was worse than a quickie in a hotel room before they disappeared from each other's lives again; this was Rodney helping John cheat on his wife or his girlfriend or whoever wasn't home tonight. This was Rodney becoming John's dirty secret. He said nothing, just glanced around to make sure he had everything and that his suit jacket wasn't in too much disrepair. _That's it, McKay,_ he told himself. _Focus on the details until the big picture goes away again._

For a moment John felt like a real shit; the look on Rodney's face hit him hard. But then, the anger came and he just leaned back against the headboard and watched as Rodney pulled his clothes on. Once, he'd thought--hell, he'd had this whole fantasy worked out--that it would have been kind of hot if they played out a hooker and client scene, but here and now he felt like that's what just happened. Like he was some kind of cheap whore and Rodney was going to leave money on the dresser.

It was about as far from hot as John could imagine.

After a stonily silent pause, Rodney finally made himself look at John again, and taking in the casual position of John's body made him angry, too, and the first thing to pop into his head was, of course, the first thing to fall out of his mouth. "Let's hope Nancy doesn't figure out you care about her as much as you cared about me."

John narrowed his eyes. _Speaking of things that were once hot, but aren't so much any more; Rodney's snark is at the top of that list._

"Oh, I figure we've got about maybe four months or so to go," he said, and maybe this was what it was like to be Rodney, what it was like to just open your mouth and let the words come out without thinking about the consequences. "But you know how it goes. Stuff can happen in four months that seems so significant at the time. I'm sure in a few years, it won't matter."

Oh, God. Rodney supposed he had that coming, but then he didn't have a significant other he was _cheating_ on, and hadn't John said he was planning on getting a room anyway? The hurt just folded in on itself until it was a knot in his chest and he thought it might just stay there, lodged. "Sure," he fired back over his shoulder on his way out. "Don't waste this room; it looks expensive and you have until, what, eleven in the morning? At this rate you could 'go again' five or six more times." And it was a stupid thing to say, and ugly, and it hurt Rodney, too, that they'd come to this.

_Details,_ he reminded himself, and he focused on the cold steel of the hotel room doorknob in his hand, the way the door opened with that hydraulic resistance and therefore would not slam shut in that satisfying way that hotel doors used to do, no matter how hard he pulled it shut behind him.

John looked at the closed door and took a deep, painful breath. His jaw went tight and he got out of bed, wincing a little, and headed toward the room's minibar. Lining the tiny bottles of over-priced booze up on the counter like targets at a shooting range, he wondered how many of them he could get through in the next few hours.

"Might as well find out," he thought, opening the Absolut. Later, he told himself, he'd call his lawyer. No reason to wait out the next few months and he was sure Nancy would be more relieved than anything. "Not like I'm a prize or anything. You're better off without me."

And if he was talking more to Rodney than his wife? Well, there was no one here to know that.

~ ~ ~ ~

_McMurdo Station, Antarctica, January 2004_

From the second Rodney had seen John in that damned...stupid..._fucking_ chair, he'd known he was in deep trouble. This was too much, and to compound things, Rodney had flat-out lied to Elizabeth to get the clearance to leave, however briefly, for McMurdo.

_Stupid chair,_ Rodney thought angrily as he crunched his way through the snow, as though the chair were really the thing at fault here. The stupid chair and the stupid gene and the stupid fucking _thing_ he still carried around for John after all this time, after all the things they'd said. It all had to come rushing back, didn't it? Just seeing John's face.

And what came to mind first was, naturally, that last _mine_ he'd uttered before he'd come on that crazy night in DC. What came to mind second was, naturally, Nancy, and in Rodney's admittedly limited imagination, he had a pretty good idea of what Nancy looked like: blonde, buxom, maybe just a little bit hippy. Narrow waist for grabbing as John fucked her--

Rodney bit out a frustrated noise and stopped the first person he saw. "Any idea where I can find Major John Sheppard?"

"Not from around here, are you?" the man laughed, shaking his head. "He's in the bar." He tilted his head toward the building that apparently housed Sheppard quite frequently.

"Great," Rodney sighed, not even bothering with a thank-you as he crunched toward the hut in question. "He can't just be a military delinquent, he has to be a drunk one."

John stared at the bottom of his glass, something he'd been doing a little too much of lately. Just last week, he'd promised himself that he'd suck it up and stop fucking _moping_, and more importantly, stop drinking. He'd done the right thing and that was the end of it. Never mind that the brass didn't see it that way; he'd done his best to bring the guys home because you just fucking _didn't_ leave men behind.

And he'd been pretty good; he hadn't stopped coming into the bar, but he'd kept himself to one drink a night and he'd started feeling a lot better, physically at least. And then, today....

Somehow it came as no surprise when his train of thought was derailed by someone sitting down next to him. A broad-shouldered someone in a really ridiculous shade of orange. "Rodney," he said.

"Sheppard," Rodney replied archly. "Given up screwing everything on two legs for drinking? Healthy."

"Yeah," John said with a harsh laugh. "But at least the penguins are safe." Rodney's tone stung, but John had gotten really good at dealing with people's disappointment in him since the last time they'd seen each other.

Clearly, Rodney was going to have to be the better man here and make the overture. The problem was that some dark little voice way, way down deep kept telling him he wasn't the better man. He shoved it aside and straightened himself up a little in the stool. "You need to get over this attitude of yours if we're going to work together," he tried, injecting as much arrogant know-it-all into his voice as he could.

"Oh God," John said, shoving his drink aside. "Not you, too. I had your boss trying to recruit me and then General O'Neil and now you." He laughed bitterly. "I haven't been this popular since I got my driver's license and Dad gave me the Beamer."

"Thanks for the insight into your gilded past," Rodney shot back dryly. Okay, he needed to try a little harder, and that was really, really difficult, because..._in a few years, it won't matter_, he thought, unbidden, and flattened both hands on the bar to give himself something to think about, a detail other than John's snarl.

"Sheppard," he started in, but his tone was too sharp and he knew it. "John," he tried again, softer, "can we please just...okay, there's a reason everyone wants you along. You're good and you've got this...thing most of us don't have. And if it means that much to Elizabeth, then I put my money on her getting what she wants, and if that's the case..." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting sharply to clear his head. "Then we really do need to...talk."

"I only told the general 'yes' to get him off my back," John said. "I'm...not going." There, he'd said it. Now he only wished he'd sounded more certain. "So you don't have to worry about it. About me."

He looked down at the bar, trying not to remember long talks about how cool it would be to go into space, how cool it would be to boldly go--for Christ's sake, Rodney had been wearing a Star Trek shirt when they met. _We were kids. This isn't the same thing at all._ But it was hard to convince himself when his skin still felt weird and his mind still buzzed with the sense of...of _something_ just out of reach, potential maybe.

"You guys don't need me."

"Yes, we do," Rodney insisted, leaning in closer, and maybe he meant a little more than he wanted to say, maybe he meant "I." But was it true, after everything? Did he need John?

He imagined, out of nowhere, a moth beating itself to death on a naked light bulb. Yeah. Somewhere along the line, he'd come to need John, even if John was an asshole cheater prick with a laundry list of fucks on the side and all the other crap Rodney had invented for his life.

"We do," he said again, dropping his eyes. "It's important."

"Rodney, I...." John couldn't do this. Not here. "Look if you want to talk, let's go back to my room." He finally looked up at Rodney. "Your virtue's safe; I promise not to jump you."

He got to his feet and walked away, telling himself he didn't really care if Rodney followed or not. But Rodney did, grabbing his parka from the coat rack near the door and following John through the perpetual morning light. "I've started walking, well really, hiking a little," John said, slowing a little to let Rodney catch up with him. "I kinda like it here...it's empty."

He shared the small hut near the runway with another pilot, but they were on opposite schedules and so the place was empty. "Have a seat," John said, waving at the other bed. "Jerry won't mind."

John was...talking. A lot. Rodney wondered if he'd changed that much, if maybe they were suddenly incompatible. He sat a little uneasily. "This is a chance to do something so much...bigger," he said, and yeah, he was reduced to whipping out lines he'd rehearsed to death, but he didn't have anything better. "A chance for something more." At once, he realized he was looking at John a certain way, imbuing his voice with something heavier, and yeah...deep in the back of his brain, he knew he wasn't talking about the stupid chair anymore.

"I don't have...Rodney, I'm not who I was, don't you get it? I'm not your surfing, math major boyfriend and I'm not that closeted asshole in a uniform you met in DC. I'm just....I'm not that guy."

He didn't really know how to explain it, how to explain that once you let yourself stop...stop caring, stop worrying about the future, just stop everything, it became easier. "I'm thinking about staying on down here, when my tour's up." And no, Rodney probably wouldn't get that, won't get that John liked it here because it was empty.

Rodney stared. He was going ninety miles an hour now, desperate to make his point even if he was flip-flopping about why he was making it. "Are you--Sheppard, are you serious? This isn't something we're asking you for as a lark, this isn't 'gee, would you like to help us meet our quota by staying on in the frigid asshole of the planet?' This is...Jesus, John, it's bigger than the particle accelerator, and there aren't _too_ damn many things bigger than that."

"Good for you," John said, a little surprised to realize that he meant it. "I'm glad you found something that...that makes you happy." He laughed a little, shocked at how sad it sounded. "You deserve better, you always have."

And wow, maybe he was drunker than he thought, but he really shouldn't be saying those things to Rodney right now, shouldn't be here with a Rodney who reminded him more of the guy he'd met in college than the man in the nice suit in DC.

_I really had him fooled,_ Rodney marveled to himself, staring down at his hands, _or he's just as good an actor now as he was in Washington._ "Are you glad?" he asked softly. "Really?"

"Okay, yeah, I deserved that." John looked down at his hands. "I should never have said the things I said in DC. I...I didn't tell you, couldn't tell you, but really it doesn't matter now. You've obviously got the clearance to hear about missions that happened five years ago....

"That day...I'd just come off a three week mission in Korea. I hadn't slept more than four hours in a row and I'd had to explain myself to a bunch of arm chair 'experts' who didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground. On top of that, I was going to have to go home to someone who loved me enough to excuse the fact that I'm queer but not the fact that I couldn't tell her about my work and then....."

He usually didn't talk this much. Hell, he was pretty sure he hadn't strung this many words together since he'd arrived here at McMurdo, but it was all there in the back of his head, needing to come out.

"There you were and I got selfish and grabbed for something that wasn't mine to grab. Not any more. And I lashed out and said things that...."

Standing up, John walked over to the mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

"Yes, I'm glad for you. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy."

That sapped out Rodney's remaining anger, what there was of it. John looked so..._defeated,_ and Rodney remembered the sun-washed golden boy with the math skills that he'd fallen in love with, and suddenly he just couldn't stand to let John rot away in this iceblock, leaning on his booze.

"It's not that I don't appreciate that," Rodney pointed out, voice too quiet, "but maybe all you ever should have wanted was for _you_ to be happy."

"I am, sometimes." And now, this part was easy. "When I'm in the air. The problem is...you've always gotta come down."

Frustrated with John's innate ability to make everything so goddamned cut-and-dried, Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you've always gotta come down. So does everyone else, but the rest of us don't get to just..." he waved his hand impatiently, "...run off to Antarctica." He stopped, abruptly realizing he was dancing around the subject, and he didn't really want to fall back on telling John to pull himself up by his fucking bootstraps. Sighing, he ran a hand over his face and shook his head, and then he just had to stand up and cross the room, approach John, crowd his space a little to make his point. "I didn't come here to convince you to do this for Elizabeth. I came to--because--oh, goddammit, Sheppard." He grabbed John and kissed him, not the heavy, lust-drenched kisses from back in the day, but just enough to prove his point before John maybe decked him. And he shouldn't have done it, of course, especially now that so much time had gone by, time and wear, but Rodney couldn't let go. He couldn't. Not until John finally told him to get lost.

The pull was still there, of course. It had been since Rodney settled next to him in the bar; hell, it had been there the moment Rodney looked at him and said "Major, think about where we are in the solar system."

But now that John had said the things he'd said, it was too much; he felt raw and open, and only part of that had anything to do with the strange sense of potential he'd gotten while sitting in the chair. He wanted to step back, to remind Rodney yet again that he wasn't that guy, wasn't the man Rodney still seemed to think he was.

When he did, just before he opened his mouth, he caught sight of the look on Rodney's face and stopped short. Rodney was expecting to be turned down and furthermore, from the way his face seemed to fall naturally into that expression, it wasn't a new thing for him. It was enough to snap John out of his selfishness, enough to make him realize that no, he hadn't stopped caring at all.

"Rodney," he said, leaning in and resting his cheek against Rodney's. "I don't...I might fall apart on you."

Rodney felt something settle into the pit of his stomach, and he didn't really know if it was hope or disappointment. "Are you kidding?" he breathed into John's ear, hands going up to John's shoulders, "I got called here to fix the arcane and volatile stuff; it's what I do."

"I dunno if I'm arcane," John said, relaxing into Rodney's grip. "But I might be a little volatile."

"That," Rodney said quietly, arms going around John fully as he finally relaxed, too, "I already knew."

John wanted to protest more, wanted to make sure Rodney knew what he was getting into here, but then he smiled a little and turned his face toward Rodney's, kissing him carefully. He wasn't entirely sure he trusted himself, but he'd once trusted Rodney and it seemed that he still did.

It was enough.

* * *

Epilogue

 

_Atlantis, Year One (right after "Hot Zone")_

John still felt like he was shaking apart from the inside as he walked down the corridor to his room. It wasn't just that he'd come so close to losing Rodney--that, sadly, seemed to happen way too often for John's taste--it was that he'd been so fucking helpless during most of the crisis. And yeah, maybe he deserved the chewing out Elizabeth had given him, but she hadn't been the one whose....

He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Rodney hadn't died, but he'd lost several of his people and for all that Rodney came across as insensitive, these latest losses right after losing both Gall and Abrams, were going to hit him hard. As John stepped into his room, he tucked his own residual fear down deep. He'd shower and then go see Rodney, he told himself. Go make sure he was okay.

Rodney was waiting for John. It was a little invasive of him--a lot invasive, if he was honest with himself--but after today...after today, he needed John. He needed to bury himself and forget that there were creatures in the very near universe who had, for whatever reason, felt compelled to create nanotechnology hell-bent on making humans die violent, insanity-filled, terrifying deaths. He needed to forget that for a while.

He especially needed to forget that in trying to save Atlantis, John had very nearly gotten killed himself.

The second John entered the room, Rodney launched himself, grabbing John hard and kissing him with more fervor than either of them had felt comfortable showing since they'd come here.

John went with it, letting Rodney shove him against the wall near the door. Rodney kissed him like he was starving and John went with that too. Maybe, he thought, he needed this as much as Rodney clearly did.

"Tell me," he said when Rodney finally pulled back for air. "What do you need?" Taking a deep breath, he added. "Whatever it is...."

"You," Rodney growled. "Just you. This." It wasn't just John or this, it was so much more: he needed to know that John really wanted him, that he hadn't dragged John back to Atlantis so they could mince around the crazy-hot intensity they both really craved. Rodney wasn't even positive they could go back there, but he for damn sure wanted to find out.

"I'm here," John said, clinging to Rodney almost as hard as Rodney was clinging to him. "_We're_ here. You...we can have this." Another deep breath, another moment of fear pushed aside, and he continued. "I'm...yours."

Rodney saw how hard it was for John to get those words out and realized they were exactly what he needed to hear. He crushed his mouth to John's and wheeled them away from the wall to stumble toward the bed.

This, yeah this part was easy. John wondered if Rodney knew how much John needed this, how much he needed to be convinced that Rodney was real and alive. And oh God, he needed to just let go and let Rodney take over. "Please," he said, and it was nothing like the last time he'd said it to Rodney, back in DC when he'd been asking to be taken back into the past.

"This is...I want you...need you, now," he said as Rodney shoved him toward the bed. "I...please?"

"Yes," Rodney promised. John could have anything he wanted. Rodney wondered why he hadn't figured that out yet, or maybe it really was that John needed permission to get it.

It didn't matter. Rodney started stripping hurriedly and nodded toward John to do the same.

John took his clothes off as quickly as he could, not sure that Rodney really got what he'd said. _No real surprise,_ he thought. _You were about as far from articulate as possible._

Later, he told himself. He'd try to explain later.

The instant it was at all feasible, Rodney plowed John into the bed. Nibbling at the edges of his consciousness was a skittery kind of fear that this would just happen again and again, that they'd opened up the biggest intergalactic can of worms ever and it would just go on. Tomorrow, he could be facing death again. Tomorrow, he could be watching _John_ face death again.

Dr. Rodney McKay was many things, but Zen had never been counted among them. He almost felt it now, though. All they had was this instant, and if he let himself think about how many times he'd have to watch John nearly-die (and no, he wasn't even going to go anywhere near worst-case right now, not at all), that was a one-way trip to whatever passed for Atlantis's funny farm.

He scrabbled for John's wrists and dragged them up over his head to pin them there, and then he was all teeth and tongue, devouring John out of relief and greed. Right this minute, John was hot and solid under him, needed him like he hadn't since they were kids together, and it was _everything._

It was like surfing, John thought, like riding a bike or waltzing; years could pass but the muscle memory would still be there. He breathed in sharply and then let it out, and it was that easy to give himself over to Rodney, that easy to let himself go like he hadn't since he was nineteen.

"Yours," he said. "God, Rodney...yours...."

"Mine," Rodney agreed in a mumble. He'd wondered in their few cautious returns to exploring each other if they'd ever really get back what they'd had before or if they were just kidding themselves. _If I was just kidding myself,_ he corrected mentally. But this...he let go of one of John's wrists and grabbed for lube. He wasn't going to overthink this. He just needed to be here with John now.

John spread his legs and gasped as Rodney pushed in hard with two fingers. It burned in all the right ways, and he moaned and arched. "Good," he gasped. "Fuck...really really good...needed this."

"Me, too." Rodney glanced down between John's legs to make sure he had the angle right, and then he leaned down to bite at John's mouth, then his neck. The urge to bite was almost overwhelming. The urge to _mark._ He groaned and latched onto John's collarbone, sucking sharply.

For half a second, John worried about a mark. But no, he trusted Rodney to remember not to make it visible, and he relaxed into it. "Please," he moaned, arching his neck a little. "Please."

The collarbone wasn't working; Rodney couldn't get a good hold on it. He moved up along John's shoulder, catching the soft ridge of muscle in his teeth and clamping down hard. He held the grip, started to suck again and pulled his fingers out of John.

_I don't have to be stoic,_ John realized. He yelped, wanting to let Rodney know that it hurt, that it was good. "Fuck me?" he managed to get out. "C'mon, Rodney, please?"

"Working on it," Rodney gritted out. He regretted that he had to let John go to fuck around with the condom, and then for a selfish instant he regretted having to fuck around with the condom at all. A million reasons why it felt superfluous, stupid, wasteful and--well, stupid again went through his head, but he couldn't give voice to any of it because he was too busy getting into John.

"Fuck," John groaned as Rodney shoved in hard. "Missed this...missed being yours...." He hadn't meant to say that and was, in fact, a little surprised that he was already so far gone that he could say things like that. And he'd missed that too, missed being pushed into a place where he didn't have to weigh every word that came out of his mouth.

The words surprised Rodney, too. It had always been such a tenuous edge for John, and Rodney had wondered alongside everything else if he'd ever be able to put John back _down._ But now, with the words tumbling out of John's mouth, the doubt just dried up. Rodney clamped a hand under John's nape and kissed him hard. He was fucking his way into John and drawing back again sharp and quick, swallowing John's grunts and keeping their mouths fixed together so maybe John wouldn't have to worry about talking too much. Rodney had heard exactly what he'd needed to.

Deprived of words, John concentrated on sensations--the sharp burn of Rodney's cock inside him, the dull throb of the bite marks on his collarbone and shoulder, the pressure of Rodney's mouth against his, and the weight of Rodney's grip on his wrists. _Next time,_ he thought vaguely, _I'll take the wristband off._

Rodney wasn't thinking like that; if the wristband even crossed his mind, it was only because it was so _John._ This was as close as he'd get to coming home. Maybe ever again. And with a strange, almost bittersweet ache, Rodney realized this was all he needed. He bit at John's mouth again, then shifted back down to bruise that shoulder some more.

"Please...." John panted as Rodney's mouth worried at his shoulder. "God...please...need this...." It was weird, but he felt his regrets--that he hadn't tracked Rodney down after that time in DC, that he hadn't followed Rodney to the East Coast back in '85--fading. He was here with Rodney, here on Atlantis where he could do something worthwhile, something important, with the person he loved. And maybe the way had been long and painful, but they were here now.

"Me, too," Rodney murmured again. He felt a need to meet John halfway, to give a little something back with John being so straightforward. He wanted to do something tender like slow down and rest their foreheads together, maybe look into John's eyes, but the heat was catching up to him too fast. He tightened his grip on John's nape. "Close," he gasped out. "Wait for me."

"Always," John gasped out. It wasn't easy, but he gritted his teeth and moved with Rodney. Somehow, he managed to hold off, managed to wait in spite of the overwhelming need to come.

Rodney was one of those guys who liked everything neatly compartmentalized, everything divided up in categories, all alphabetized, chronological and sorted by chemical composition. He'd been around long enough now to know that people were messy and unsortable; you just couldn't put them in boxes and timeframes. Still, this would be one of those moments he'd classify as _after._ They'd had their own before and after Stanford, and their before and after DC, but this meant something completely different. "Always" had carried so much weight in the heat of the moment, and "yours," and "mine," but the only real "always" back in those days had been the constantly nagging understanding that there would be no such thing.

Now Rodney, with his scientific mind and his neat capacity for labeling everything based in reality and nothing that wasn't, suddenly had _faith._ Not just in John, but in this, in _them_, and he wasn't sure he could say he'd had that in that hot, intense discovery time before.

Oddly, it was that thought driving him over, making him tighten his hand behind John's neck and cry out as he shuddered through it. "Come, John," he choked out at the last.

With a harsh groan, John came. It hit him hard, like pulling heavy gees, and he wrapped his legs around Rodney and just let the feeling take him.

"God," he gasped, when he could finally speak. "God...Rodney...I was so fucking worried. So sure I was gonna lose you."

"So was I." Rodney realized how that sounded and snorted out a soft laugh. He pulled out and settled to one side to deal with the condom. "I mean--about you. That was some--wow." He rested his hand on John's chest, unsure even now that he could tell John just how fucking _impressed_ he was with John's capabilities under pressure.

"Earlier, I was...I kept thinking how I should have tried to find you after we met in DC, or how I should have...I dunno, gone after you when you left Stanford...." John sighed and rested his palm on his forehead. "I suck at this whole...talking thing. But...I'm glad I'm here, glad we're here, glad you talked me into it, didn't come to Atlantis without me."

Rodney smiled. "You know what? You don't suck at the talking thing as much as you think you do. And I'm glad, too." He stretched over and grabbed a t-shirt off the floor to scrub at John's belly. He sighed companionably. "More glad than I can say."

"Yeah?" John reached out and pulled Rodney close. "More than you can say...that's a lot, you talkative freak."

Rodney felt himself pulled in several directions, but then at once everything coalesced. He grinned mildly. "Yeah," he sighed, "we determined a long time ago that I'm right with my freakishness." He turned his head to look at John. "You?"

"Me?" John paused for a moment and then looked at Rodney seriously. "We're both pretty freaky really, but it's okay; I like the way we fit. I always have."

_-end-_


End file.
